Chapter 14
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
TYLER
Why does it smell like coffee in here?
It’s my first thought as I jog down the stairs.
It’s barely six in the morning, and my house never smells like coffee at six in the morning.
Until a few weeks ago that was, because I lived here alone and I’m not much of a coffee drinker.
But since Sophie moved in, it’s because I’m the one who makes the coffee she requires the second she stumbles, half awake, into the kitchen, and my favorite thing to do now that she’s living here is to watch her wake up slowly as she drinks her first cup.
My favorite thing is her. I know this. My favorite thing has always been her. But over the last few weeks, I’ve started to think that might mean something different now.
Coffee in the pot means Sophie must already be awake.
Pouring some into a mug, I take a sip and immediately grimace.
I don’t even really like coffee all that much, but even I can tell this coffee is terrible.
Chuckling to myself at Sophie’s absolute ineptitude in the kitchen that I find so freaking endearing, I pour out the pot and set the coffee machine up to make a new batch.
Because if Soph is awake at six in the morning, she’s going to need caffeine, and I like being the one to give her what she needs.
As the coffee brews, I glance at my phone and see that chaos girl hasn’t texted back yet.
I briefly consider that telling a woman I met on a dating app and wouldn’t recognize if I was literally standing in front of her that I don’t like the idea of her talking to other people was not my most strategic move.
I tend to talk first and think second, and I wonder if that borderline creepy show of possession freaked her out. If maybe I’m about to be ghosted.
I feel more disappointed by that thought than is probably normal, especially considering my muddy and complicated feelings for Sophie I haven’t begun to sort through yet.
Is it weird to have feelings for two women at the same time?
Do I actually have feelings for Sophie, or is it just our current living situation messing with my head?
Is it possible to have feelings for a woman I’ve never actually laid eyes on and have only spoken to by text?
All very good questions. And I immediately shove those very good questions directly out of my brain and relegate them to later, because it’s six in the morning and the coffee is finished, and I have a very undercaffeinated best friend awake long before she should be, which is something that needs my immediate and undivided attention.
Sophie’s favorite mug is missing—probably currently in her room with her and full of subpar coffee—so I grab an oversize Renegades mug and fill it up, adding milk and the syrup Sophie likes before setting off in search of her, coffee in hand.
I head back up the stairs and pause in the hallway, listening for any sounds from inside her bedroom.
I don’t hear anything and consider the possibility that maybe she went back to sleep.
Not wanting to knock and wake her, I decide to go in and leave the coffee on her nightstand so she’ll have it when she wakes up.
I smile, thinking of the relieved, happy little hum she’ll make when she takes the first sip. The way her eyes will drop closed and then open again, the caffeine clearing the whiskey brown.
I really should get around to sorting through these feelings because I’m self-aware enough to know thinking of the sound Sophie makes when she drinks coffee and what her eyes look like in the morning does not exactly scream friends only.
Later, though. Caffeinate Sophie first.
Reaching for the handle, I turn it slowly and push open the door. And in the space of one single heartbeat, every thought I’ve ever had empties from my brain, and all the blood in my body drains directly to my dick so fast I have to lock my knees to stay upright.
I assumed Sophie would be in bed, fast asleep. It was a poor assumption on my part, because she is very much not in bed and extremely not asleep.
Sophie is naked.
Holy fucking fuck, Sophie is naked.
Naked as in standing in the middle of her bedroom wearing no clothes at all, a towel pooled on the floor at her feet.
Her damp curls drip onto her shoulders, drops of water that slide along her collarbone, over what are surely the most perfect tits ever to exist on this earth and dusky pink nipples that pebble under my gaze.
The curve of her waist and flare of her hips and long legs and thighs that clench when my eyes land at their apex.
Fuck. Me.
Naked Sophie is the best thing I’ve ever seen in my entire life.
I should stop looking. I should walk away. Somewhere in the back of my head is a red flag waving, an alarm blaring, warning me back from a line I shouldn’t cross. A bell I can’t unring.
But I ignore it.
I ignore it all.
I drink her in greedily, devouring her with my eyes, because Sophie is the most gorgeous woman I’ve ever laid eyes on, with miles of smooth skin I want to touch every inch of. Hair I want to tangle my hands in. Lips I want to consume.
Motherfucker, I want to kiss her.
She’s my best friend in the world, and I want to kiss her more than I want to take my next breath.
I want to know what she tastes like and what sounds she makes and whether her creamy skin flushes pink when she comes.
I want to hear her moan my name and know what it feels like when she moves under me. Over me. Everywhere.
So, look away? Not fucking likely.
The house could be on fire, and I would still be standing here, eyes glued to her, unable to move or think or fucking breathe because all of a sudden every single thought or feeling I’ve had in the last few weeks makes perfect sense, and I see it all with such startling, stunning clarity I don’t understanding how I haven’t realized it until now.
I want Sophie.
So fucking much.
I have feelings for Sophie that are big and important. Feelings that are full of what ifs and possibility and what will happen when and are so much more than the fact that she’s gorgeous when she’s naked.
Even though, goddamn.
My gaze travels back up her body, and when our eyes lock and hold, hers are filled with questions and heat and a simmering intensity that has my stomach tightening with want.
My breath backs up in my lungs. I can’t tear my eyes away.
My heart slams against my ribs. My cock is hard as steel.
My feet are moving before my brain kicks in. One step. Then two. My arms aching to get around her. My fingers itching to touch her.
It’s the third step that flips the switch. I can see it happen in real time. Sophie blinks, as if coming out of a daze. The intensity in her eyes turns to panic, the breath gusting out of her lungs.
“Oh my god, Tyler, what the fuck?” she screeches, reaching down and sweeping her towel off the floor, wrapping it around her body so fast I could almost make myself believe I never saw anything at all, except my brain immediately serves up an image of Sophie’s tits and yeah, No chance of that, I think with a smirk.
I’ll be seeing those tits in my dreams.
“Why the fuck are you smiling?” she bellows at me. “And why are you even in here? Why didn’t you knock?”
I could apologize and slink out of her room. Give her some privacy and take my own moment to adjust. But the thing is, now that it’s out there, my feelings don’t feel so sudden to me, and even if they were, I’m a quarterback. An awesome one. I was born to adjust on the fly.
This is my moment to shine.
So instead of fleeing her room, I settle in, leaning against Sophie’s dresser and crossing my legs at the ankles, gesturing with the mug I just remembered is still in my hand. “Brought you coffee.”
She levels me with a glare. “You barged into my room at six-thirty in the morning without knocking when I was naked to bring me coffee?”
I shrug casually, absolutely delighted by her grumpy voice.
I love grumpy Sophie. With my newfound clarity of the morning, I realize it’s possible I love every Sophie, and warmth gusts through me, smile spreading over my face, because hot damn, I think I love Sophie, and what an excellent fucking day this is turning out to be.
“You were up early and you hate early. I thought you might need to caffeinate. The naked thing was just a bonus.”
Sophie stares at me, her chest rising and falling rapidly above her towel, pulse fluttering in her throat and a light flush staining her cheeks.
I can tell she’s trying to be irritated but can’t quite get there because what she is, is affected.
Yeah, Sophie is affected by the way I was looking at her.
If she wasn’t, she would have shoved me directly out of this room the second I walked into it—and I would potentially be bleeding profusely from the loss of one very important appendage—but she didn’t.
Nothing could possibly thrill me more.
“Why do I like you again?” she mutters.
I chuckle. “Maybe it’s the coffee. I make really excellent coffee.”
Sophie blows out a frustrated breath, gesturing to the mug on the floor by her bed. “I don’t need your coffee. I made my own.”
I scoff. “That’s not coffee; that’s battery acid.
Sal, you are good at so many things, but absolutely none of them are in the kitchen.
” I hold out the mug to her. “I made you real coffee, the kind that won’t burn off your stomach lining and will caffeinate you with joy instead of that sadness in a mug you have over there. ”
With one hand gripping the top of her towel, she takes a cautious step forward, grabbing the mug with her free hand and stepping back immediately, as if being too close to me is an occupational hazard.
She takes a quick sip, her eyes never leaving mine.
“What do you mean the naked thing was just a bonus?” she asks warily.